


Your "Ok" Or My "Ok"?

by everyperfectsummer



Series: Coldwave week [3]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Chronic Illness, Domestic, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-16 03:07:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11819964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everyperfectsummer/pseuds/everyperfectsummer
Summary: Sometimes, things are fine. Sometimes they’re not. Always, Mick is there to face them with him.





	Your "Ok" Or My "Ok"?

**Author's Note:**

> Featuring a chronically ill character because my health is currently waging war on me. Trigger warnings for vomit, pain mentions, and past child abuse.  
> Alternative title: sometimes...being in pain all the time...is worse.

Len’s sick, always has been and always will be, even if the severity of his symptoms waxes and wanes according to what he eats and how much he exerts himself and which goddamn planets are in retrograde.

 

So he knows he’s demanding, know he’s a  _ lot _ , knows his basic needs are more than the average person can handle. They were too much for his mom, dad, and even sometimes Lisa. Which is fine. It wasn’t their responsibility to take care of him, isn’t anybody’s but his own. But it does mean that he’s waiting for the day when he’s too much for Mick, too. Waiting for Mick to realize that the disaster that is Len doesn’t have to be his problem. Waiting for Mick to walk away.

 

It’s a fear that he pushes back most of the time, because he’s Captain Cold, he’s smart even if he’s not strong, he’s capable though he’s not quick, and he knows that Mick needs him, couldn’t get away with half their heists without him, couldn’t have become a supervillain or a Legend without Len, and that makes Len worth hanging onto, for Mick. But the fear comes back full force on days like this. 

He wakes up sometime in the middle of the night – 4:26 am, his internal clock tells him – and everything hurts  _ so badly _ a migraine competing with limb pain competing with abdomen pain badly enough that the first thing he does once he’s fully woken up is sit up, lean over his own lap, and vomit, careful to get it all on the blanket in his lap, easy for him to clean up.

 

Or easy for Mick to clean up, because it doesn’t look like he’ll be able to walk anytime soon and Mick’s already stirring beside him, a dazed “Len?” coming from the pillow next to him.

 

Len manages to say, “Sick,” as he gathers the blanket up into a ball around the vomit, eyes already watering from the pain.  _ Please please make it stop, _ he begs a god he doesn’t believe in,  _ please please it hurts. _

 

Mick slides out of bed, stands up, and carefully grabs the soiled blanket bundle. This has happened enough times that he knows what’s happened, knows to take it to the laundry room and rinse it out before the stain sets, knows Len would do it but physically can’t.

 

“I’ll take this to the laundry while you get the box?” he whispers, mindful of Len’s head, and Len nods, already reaching for their med supply kit next to the bed.

 

He pulls out the heating pads, sets one on his stomach and one on his legs, reaching over to plug them in before turning them on. He pulls out an ice pack from the tiny mini cooler and puts that on his head. Last, he grabs a saltine and a tiny can of gingerale and starts taking small sips interrupted by small bites of the cracker, all while in agonizing pain. It’s become a routine by now; he knows what to do, knows that he just has to wait it out, but it’s scary and it hurts and whenever he has a flare up he suddenly feels all of five years old being hit by his father for the first time.

 

Mick comes back with two mixing bowls, setting one on the floor and another in Len’s lap.

 

“Want me to sit up with you, or go somewhere else?” Mick asks, voice quiet.

 

Len considers. He wants Mick to get sleep, but he also wants Mick here with him. “Here?” he says, dreading that this request will be the one that’s too much, that makes Mick leave him.

 

“Ok,” Mick says, settling in next to Len with a kindle set on black screen so that the light from the screen doesn’t hurt Len’s eyes. Len wants to cry at the gesture, and then the pain intensifies and he actually starts crying. Mick wraps an arm around him, and pulls him against him, rubbing his shoulder as he sobs.

 

The two of them are up all night, with Len throwing up twice more and crying until his head hurts even more than it had previously, until finally, mercifully, he falls asleep around noon, the harsh sunlight not quite blocked out by their curtains. 

 

Len’s slowly emerging from sleep, blanketed in evening sunlight, when he feels someone tracing lightly on his back, loops and swirls and the occasional straight line forming patterns that he can’t quite discern.

 

He opens his eyes, turning to face Mick.

 

“You feeling better?” Mick whispers, mindful of his volume lest Len still be in pain.

 

Len considers, taking a catalogue of his body. It still throbs with pain, with scars, old injuries, and the ever-present nausea all making themselves known. But he can stand to hear Mick speak without crying now, knows that he could walk if he chose to leave the bed. 

 

He doesn’t feel “ok,” doesn’t feel a healthy person’s normal, and never will. But he does feel better. “Yes,” he tells Mick, “I do.”

 

He still wants to scrape out his internal organs with a spoon, still wants a refund on this body that hinders him as much as it helps. But he’s feeling better than he was, and Mick is here. Things are ok. 

 

He wraps an arm around Mick, and settles in to go back to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Is this entirely because I want someone to pick up the vomit and hug me during a flareup?...maybe.


End file.
